Age verification UK explained: How is it impacting the UK?
This means that age verification tools are now being used on sites where they could access harmful content.
Here's all you need to know about the new rules and how they are being implemented.
Well done to everyone who campaigned to ensure age verification for pornography was in the Online Safety Act!
Today it comes into force and while no doubt there will be some who get around it, it means young kids in particular won't be stumbling on violent and harmful porn. pic.twitter.com/LGtISAmReC — Jess Asato MP (@Jess4Lowestoft) July 25, 2025
What is the Online Safety Act?
The Online Safety Act is a piece of legislation that received Royal Assent on October 26, 2023, with the aim of protecting children and adults online.
The Government website adds: "It puts a range of new duties on social media companies and search services, giving them legal duties to protect their users from illegal content and content harmful to children.
"The Act gives providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce risks their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear.
Why is age verification being used on the internet?
As of July 25, internet platforms have a legal duty to protect children from harmful content.
Companies within the scope of the act must introduce safety measures as part of this, which include age verification.
The Guardian reports: "This means all pornography sites must have in place rigorous age-checking procedures."
They continued: "Social media platforms and large search engines must also prevent children from accessing pornography and material that promotes or encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders."
Platforms will also have to suppress other material that could be potentially harmful to children.
This could include "the promotion of dangerous stunts, encouraging the use of harmful substances and enabling bullying".
How is age verification utilised by platforms?
Ofcom, the media regulator, has set out a number of ways websites can verify the age of users.
This can be done through credit card checks, photo ID matching and estimating age using a selfie.
Whatever format platforms choose, they must be "technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair," BBC News reports.
Which sites will require age verification?
Pornhub and a number of other major adult websites have confirmed they will introduce enhanced age checks, BBC News reports.
Recommended reading:
Reddit has already introduced checks to stop people aged under 18 from looking at "certain mature content", while X and Grindr have committed to this as well.
Discord gives UK users a choice of face or ID scanning as a way to verify their age, after testing methods, and Bluesky says it will give UK users a range of different verification options, external.
BBC News adds: "Many more services which allow sexually explicit material may need to bring in measures to comply with the new rules."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ITV News
13 minutes ago
- ITV News
Tasers issued to some prison officers after attack at HMP Frankland in County Durham
Some specialist prison officers are being equipped with Tasers from today (Monday 28 July), following an attack at HMP Frankland in County Durham in April. The Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said she is 'determined to keep prison staff safe', as the Government aims to clamp down on record levels of violence. The Taser trial follows an incident at HMP Frankland in April this year, when Manchester Arena plotter Hashem Abedi targeted prison staff with boiling oil and homemade weapons in a planned ambush. Four prison officers were injured, with three of them taken to hospital. Ms Mahmood has admitted this attack has sped up the trial of Tasers, saying the incident 'has really forced the pace on further roll-out of these measures.' Specialist officers from the Operational Response and Resilience Unit based in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and Doncaster, South Yorkshire, will be the first to become equipped with Tasers. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood attended the base in Kidlington last Thursday, when officers demonstrated how they would use Tasers on violent inmates in scenarios where there is a significant threat to safety – such as hostage situations or riots. The trial will run until enough data has been collected to determine if Tasers should be more widely used, according the Ministry of Justice – but Ms Mahmood said she hoped to have updates in the autumn. It comes after rates of assaults on prison staff reached record levels last year, rising by 13% in the 12 months up to December 2024, according to Government data. There were also 10,496 assaults on staff in the 12 months to September 2024 – a 23% increase from the previous 12 months and a new peak. The Tasers will be worn by officers on their tactical vest in a secure holster, making the weapon visible to inmates as a deterrent, officers told Ms Mahmood last week. The Prison Officers' Association (POA) said it welcomed the move, but added the Government needed to address the roots of violence in jail. 'The POA will always support any initiative that will help protect our members,' a spokesperson for the trade union said. 'However, as welcome as this initiative is, we need to address the reasons why prison officers need Tasers in the first place. 'Violence in our prisons is out of control and apathetic prison managers would rather put the prison regime before the safety of their staff. 'We urgently need action to address overcrowding, understaffing, drugs and the other root causes of prison violence.'
The National
27 minutes ago
- The National
Petition to repeal Online Safety Act reaches 340K signatures
On the UK Government website, it shares that the Online Safety Act was created to protect "children and adults online" by putting a "range of new duties on social media companies and search services." The changes from the act apply across the UK and include age checks on pornography websites, as well as other platforms like Reddit, X and Bluesky. The Act was passed into law on October 26, 2023, and was implemented on July 25, 2025, with platforms now requiring users to prove their age by ID verification. Well done to everyone who campaigned to ensure age verification for pornography was in the Online Safety Act! Today it comes into force and while no doubt there will be some who get around it, it means young kids in particular won't be stumbling on violent and harmful porn. — Jess Asato MP (@Jess4Lowestoft) July 25, 2025 The measures, as part of the Online Safety Act and set to be enforced by regulator Ofcom, require online platforms to have age checks – using facial age estimation or credit card checks. Since the act was implemented, a petition has been launched and has surpassed more than 340,000 signatures. Calls for the Online Safety Act to be repealed in viral petition Sharing why the petition was made, the creator behind it Alex Baynham, wrote: "We believe that the scope of the Online Safety act is far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society. "For instance, the definitions in Part 2 covers online hobby forums, which we think do not have the resource to comply with the act and so are shutting down instead. "We think that parliament should repeal the act and work towards producing proportionate legislation rather than risking clamping down on civil society talking about trains, football, video games or even hamsters because it can't deal with individual bad faith actors." At the time of writing, the petition had surpassed the needed 100,000 signatures for Parliament to consider debating the petition. On TikTok, the act has prompted a large amount of debate. Recommended Reading Content creator Thomas Pearson branded the act "pointless", sharing that he believes the act "is a fundamental betrayal of one of the core principles of British democracy; governing and policing by consent". Previously discussing the act, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle told Sky News: "I have very high expectations of the change that children will experience. "And let me just say this to parents and children, you will experience a different internet really, for the first time in from today, moving forward than you've had in the past. And that is a big step forward."
Glasgow Times
32 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
Reform pledges to scrap Online Safety Act over free speech concerns
Former party chairman Zia Yusuf said the Act, intended to reduce online harm, did 'absolutely nothing to protect children' but worked to 'suppress freedom of speech' and 'force social media companies to censor anti-government speech'. Addressing a press conference at Reform's headquarters in Westminster, Mr Yusuf said: 'We will repeal this Act as one of the first things a Reform government does.' Under rules that came into effect on July 25, online platforms such as social media sites and search engines must take steps to prevent children accessing harmful content such as pornography or material that encourages suicide. Reform UK's Zia Yusuf said the Online Safety Act did not protect children, but pushed them to more dangerous parts of the internet (Lucy North/PA) This includes introducing age verification for websites and ensuring algorithms do not work to harm children by, for example, pushing such content towards them when online. Failing to comply with the new rules could incur fines of up to £18 million or 10% of a firm's global turnover, whichever is greater. But Mr Yusuf said greater take-up of VPN services, which can enable internet users to circumvent the new rules, showed the legislation did not protect children and in fact made them less safe. He said: 'Sending all of these kids onto VPNs is a far worse situation, and sends them much closer to the dark web, where the real dangers lie.' He also criticised sections of the legislation that allow ministers to direct regulator Ofcom to modify its rules setting out how companies can comply with requirements to crack down on illegal or harmful content, saying it was 'the sort of thing that I think (Chinese president) Xi Jinping himself would blush at the concept of'. During the press conference, Reform leader Nigel Farage acknowledged that his party did not have 'a perfect answer' for what could replace the Online Safety Act, but said his party had 'more access to some of the best tech brains, not just in the country but in the world' and would 'make a much better job of it'. Former detective Colin Sutton has agreed to join Reform UK as a police and crime adviser (Lucy North/PA) A Labour Party spokesperson said repealing the Online Safety Act would 'scrap vital protections for young people online and recklessly open the floodgates to kids being exposed to extreme digital content'. They added: 'Reform offers anger but no answers. They won't say what they would do instead to keep people safe. Farage would give children access to material on suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography. He is simply not serious.' Reform's announcement came during a press conference on crime, at which Mr Farage unveiled retired Metropolitan Police detective Colin Sutton as an adviser on police and crime. Mr Sutton, who retired from the police in 2011, led the investigations into serial killer Levi Bellfield and serial rapist Delroy Grant during a 30-year career. He is expected to stand for Reform at the next general election, and said he would push for Reform to commit to opening at least 300 public-facing police buildings along with recruiting 30,000 new officers. Mr Sutton said he would also back getting rid of diversity initiatives in the police, saying: 'If you need some help, if you need police officers, if you need help quickly, do you actually care who comes through the door?' The event was also attended by American conservative media pundit Ann Coulter.
